


My Burning Sun will Someday Rise

by quandary



Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/F, More tags and characters to come, One-sided pining, v is a turbo dyke butch woooo
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-17
Updated: 2021-01-17
Packaged: 2021-03-15 15:46:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28815837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quandary/pseuds/quandary
Summary: The Aldecaldos made it to Arizona, but nothing is going right. V is still dying, and Panam's leadership seems to crumble right at her feet. Only Judy seems to be content, free of the shadow of Night City at last.
Relationships: Judy Alvarez/Female V, Panam Palmer & Female V
Comments: 9
Kudos: 66





	My Burning Sun will Someday Rise

**Author's Note:**

> big shout out to my buds nhu and casey for reading through and giving me suggestions, but most of all for wrangling the absolute tire fire that were my tenses. second part to follow yee haw buddies hope you enjoy being gut punched emotionally
> 
> might increase the rating depending on what i follow through on.

It had been two days since the Aldecaldos made camp several miles south of New Mexico proper. They straddled the state line, and impatience started to creep in. Panam could feel it as a restless buzzing in her limbs, a torturous tension nestling at the back of her head. Enough to make her consider letting down her hair, but the heat nipped that thought right in the bud. She already removed her bolero.

Panam had no intention of wandering into New Mexico, but there were several reasons that drew her to the border: securing a job, and following up on an overdue favour. Finding work for the family was beginning to be an exercise in futility, and harder still to keep everyone happy. There were only so many ways to say 'be patient' that she worried the rest of the Aldecaldos were growing tired of hearing them.

The work up to this point had been menial, piecemeal, and not like the smuggling they were so used to back in Night City. They’ve only been in Arizona for two months, and already her leadership was blowing up right in her face. She could see the doubt in some of their eyes, the questioning glances. Any other time, Panam might have chalked that up to paranoia, but now?

She worried she was well and truly pooched, her stint as leader dead before it even got a chance to crawl.

Inspecting some of the empty buildings of the farm the Aldecaldos camped in proved to be a poor distraction. It was all moldy wood and patchy roofs and rotted steps anyway. A farmhouse, which she stood in front of, and a barn that leaned precariously to the left. And beyond that, nothing but dust. Wind kicked up a cloud of it on the horizon.

“Panam?”

She turned at the familiar voice, forced her features into a neutral mask. V strode towards her, in her ripped jeans and Aldecaldo bolero. How she was wearing the bolero was anyone’s guess. 

“I wanted to talk with you.” V said. Panam did not have the energy to deal with her, not then. But V always had a way of worming herself right under Panam’s skin, like she just couldn’t say no even if she desperately wanted to.

The hot afternoon sun beat down on the back of Panam's neck. An errant bead of sweat tickled the flesh between her shoulder blades. She seized V up for a little too long in the suffocating heat, partly to be petty and partly because she could tell she wasn’t going to like their conversation.

There was a firm set to V's narrow shoulders, and her usually pouty mouth was a grim, determined line. Panam had seen that look before. Several times, in fact, and found it always came before disaster.

V's aviator shades reflected Panam's squinty-eyed look back at her. At last, she motioned towards an abandoned farmhouse with a jerk of her head. It's not unlike the farmhouse she, Saul and V sought refuge in all those months ago. She willed the bitter memory away.

Silently, V followed. They stomped up the stairs with Panam warning V about the second step just as her foot punched through rotted wood. Without thinking, Panam offered V her hand to yank her out. 

There's a moment of hesitation on the other woman's part before she takes the help, like she couldn’t believe the offer, like she expected that hand to shove. The urge to roll her eyes was hard to ignore. 

“Come on,” Panam said.

“Thanks,” At last, V took her hand, and she eased her ankle out of the hole. 

Inside, the house had been all but gutted. There was a kitchen, a living space and a door that probably hid what must have been the bathroom. Mitch was right, it would be perfect as a temporary school for the handful of kids in the caravan. Panam hedged a bet that the farmhouse had been around since the Collapse. It certainly smelled like it: must and dust and mildew, decades of disuse catching up.

There was barely any light, with only a few bars of sunlight slipping through the boards on the windows, with several holes in the roof. She would need to find a tarp for that, maybe remove the planks covering the windows to let in natural light. 

With crossed arms, she took a chance and leaned against what was once a kitchen counter. She watched V loiter in the living area, looking incredibly lost. Her aviator shades hung off the collar of her tank-top.

"Well?" Panam began. "What do you have for me?" 

V started and stopped, adrift in the quicksand of her own indecision. She dragged a hand through her hair, forcing it out of her eyes. Brown roots chased the too-bright red away. The brown suited V better than the red ever did.

"Can this stay between us?" she managed at last, hand falling to her side.

“‘Course.” Panam said, a little gruffer than she wanted. Lately, they hadn't been seeing eye to eye or agreeing on much of anything anymore, and the whole thing was starting to feel a little too familiar to her. She’d been through it before with Saul, and the last thing she ever wanted was to repeat it with V. Least of all with V.

“I’ve been doing a lot of thinking lately,” V said carefully. The toe of her boot kicked at a pebble that found its way inside. 

“Now that’s dangerous.” Panam expected a laugh, but got only a weak nod of her head. 

“And I think that it might be for the best if we stopped trying to find a… cure. For me.” V said. “There’s so much going on, and I--”

“Your brain’s more fried than I thought if you think I’m gonna let that happen.” Panam cut V off, unwilling to let her finish the sentence.

"It's not your choice to make!" A bit of the old V came back, steadfast and ready to match whatever Panam threw her way. She missed that version of V, and everyday she found herself hating the one in front of her.

"What did you say?" Anger wrapped a fist around her heart, V's words echoing in her head. She was pissed more at V's audacity than she was her dismissal.

The resolute determination from before evaporated, replaced by something several shades more unsure. V took a step back, an almost involuntary motion. She couldn’t stand the meekness that seemed to eat up what remained of her friend. 

"I don't want you to waste your time anymore, Panam," V carried on, but the conviction was dead, the words were hollow. She swallowed thickly, like it all was hard to say. "I don't want you to burn through your contacts trying to help me." She raised her hands in a placating gesture, trying and failing to head off the brunt of whatever storm brewed in Panam.

"Not gonna happen, V." Panam said, leaving the small kitchen and entering the even smaller living room. "That is not what we signed up for, and definitely not what we said was gonna happen when leaving Night City."

“No, I can’t--” V stopped, catching herself. Her eyes darted from the wall to Panam, unwilling to focus just on her. V’s eyes grew wet, and Panam realized V didn’t want her to see her cry, as if the act of doing so would be admitting weakness. “You gotta understand where I’m coming from. There is so much more for you to worry about now, and I don’t want to watch you tear yourself in two.”

 _Tear herself in two?_ She was in a million fucking pieces trying to find someway to stop V from dying, and she had the balls to say she couldn’t watch?

“Are you trying to make Saul’s death mean nothing?” Panam spat, throwing her arms out for emphasis. “What about Bobby and Teddy? If so, congratulations.” 

"That's not fair." There was no heat in the rebuff. In fact, V's voice had dropped to a whisper and a tiny voice told Panam she went too far. But Panam had never done anything in half-measures, much less compromises. She doubled down, rounded on V so fast she swore she saw the other woman flinch.

"None of this is!" The statement hung between them, heavy with accusation. A beat of silence followed as Panam's eyes drifted down from V's face, to the blood just starting to peek out of her nose. 

Of course. Of course that just had to happen then.

V swiped at it with the back of her hand, shoulders hunched, eyes anywhere but her. Panam closed the distance between them in that small space. She's almost a head taller than V; she had to look up to meet Panam's glare. The bleeding continued, dripped from her chin into the collar of her tank top where it bloomed into a gory rorschach test.

"You are an asshole, you know that, right?" Panam hissed, tone dripping with venom. "After everything I have done for you, after everything we have been through? And your _choice_ is to shit all over that, to lay down and die?" 

With every word, Panam's anger and frustration only grew. It sat heavy in the pit of her stomach, the bile an acrid acid burning her throat. Her voice filled the small house, seemed to bounce back at them tenfold. She was a human volcano, forced to watch herself erupt and powerless to stop.

Before her, V wilted, face unreadable. A muscle twitched in her jaw. She said nothing, did nothing. Didn’t even bother to wipe the blood off her face, rorschach test growing on the collar of her once-white tank top. The inaction drove Panam up the wall, had her wanting to throw something. Shove V away, slap her, even. Anything to get a rise, to get her to do anything at all but stand there doing nothing. 

Yet V stood, bleeding and stupid and haloed by the afternoon sun slipping in through the borded up windows. She looked tired. She looked like shit. Underneath the rage, Panam's heart was breaking and she wanted it to stop.

"Well, fuck you, V." Panam’s voice cracked at the end, and all the rage gave way to something infinitely more vulnerable than she was ready to deal with. The small voice from before, the one that rendered her scared and useless in the face of inevitability, began to whisper again. Did it make her feel good to bring V close to tears, to tear her down? (Why wouldn't she just let her help?)

It left her scooped out and hollow as the two of them stared at each other across the living room. Neither of them said anything for a moment. Panam wagered neither of them wanted to. 

V made it worse by shattering the quiet.

"Panam, please," There was something raw about her voice, something small and broken. V finally wiped at the blood, but her hand only smeared it across her face. God, but she wanted to make it all better, scoop V up and promise she’d fix things. She couldn’t, though. Panam was no peddler of miracles, and too full of pride to admit she made a mistake, to admit V had every right to want to stop. It had more to do with Panam’s reluctance to let go than it ever did V’s inability to let her help. 

"Enough." She contented herself over the fact she could steady her voice enough to speak, didn’t want to ponder what would have happened if it broke instead. "If you want to die so fucking badly, be my guest. But I am done, you hear me? I am done watching you do it." There's enough vitriol in her tone to make even her second guess it all, but the way V's face crumpled was enough to tell her the damage was done. Blood pounded in Panam’s ears as the absence of anger started to make her hands tremble.

Suddenly the house became too tiny, too suffocating and the thought of spending another moment in there with her was tantamount to torture. Panam shoved past V, and out the door.

V did not follow.

****

A warm wind pushed its way past the feeble tent flaps. Rolling them down did little to dissuade the rising temperature, much less the insistence of a summer in the middle of a desert. It was a lot like fucking for abstinence.

Judy opted to wear little more than a pair of shorts and a ratty old shirt she grifted off of V, but that did little to help. The bed beneath her seemed to absorb the heat.

The laptop screen in front of her flickered, and she rubbed at her eyes irritably. An entire morning wasted trying to solve Carol's power fluctuation problem, which she was convinced was due in no small part to Dakota's insistence on overriding the surge protectors for whatever stupid reason. 

She didn't hear the rustle of someone stepping inside the tent. It's only when she caught movement in her peripheral vision does she look away from the screen. The sight was enough to make her heart leap in her throat. V stopped mid-stride, like a deer caught in the headlights. Blood was smeared across her face, and stained the collar of her tank top.

"Valerie?" A part of Judy panicked because V was on the brink of tears, and she didn’t have nearly enough experience in that department. Something not unlike alarm flit across V’s features.

“I’m sorry--I thought--” That Judy wouldn’t be here, that she could lick her wounds alone, well before she would return.

“The job got postponed ‘till the end of the week,'' Judy explained lamely. Mitch and Carol talked her into a small job on the outskirts of Phoenix; a little bit of infiltration and hacking, a whole lot of sneaking. A milkrun, they claimed, but the client sent word about the change of plans late last night.

“Right,” Slowly and deliberately, V took off her Aldecaldo bolero, set it on top of their chest of meager belongings. Neither of them had much they wanted to bring, the rest they sold or gave away. 

Judy continued to watch her back in quiet confusion. If she hadn’t known her better, she’d assumed that V just got her ass kicked, but she knew the truth behind the nose bleed. That worried her more than whatever else tossed V into a well of self-pity.

“Are you gonna tell me what happened?” She hedged carefully, shutting the lid of her laptop closed. 

V wiped at her face--no doubt trying to remove the dried blood--mumbled a soft, “I guess.” 

A disinterested roll of her shoulders, a rough burr to her voice--all a weak facade to hide her feelings and protect her bruised pride. All because she hated appearing weak. A tell Judy learned shortly into their relationship, and about the only one she knew of. At times, an encrypted shard was easier to read than her own girlfriend. 

Judy slid off the bed, crossed over to her. Uncertainty filled her close to overflowing. She couldn't ignore the fact that V was hurting, but she didn’t know what to do, or say. So she opted to wrap her arms around V's waist, rest her head on her shoulder. The hug seemed neutral ground. An invitation if V wanted to take it.

"Only if you wanna." The tension left V by inches. A subtle rise of her chest, a heavy exhale. They stood like that for a lingering moment. Then a hand rested on her forearm, the thumb moving idly.

"Panam and I fought." The two of them had been at each other's throats for a solid week now. Even the other Aldecaldo members were beginning to notice; at least no one expected Judy to play referee in fights she had no right to be in. "What else is there to say?" 

"What did you fight about this time?" She laced their hands together and led V to the bed, where she urged her to sit.

"Take a guess." V said, digging the heel of her palms into her eyes. Judy took the opportunity to find water and a rag, to properly clean the remainder of the blood off of her face. There wasn’t much in the way of either, but Judy found an old shirt too torn to wear, and water V left behind this morning. It would do.

"Let’s see… you two couldn't decide on a name for your first born child." Judy said, giving a one-shoulder shrug as she wet the rag with water.

Sitting on the edge of the bed, V looked so small despite being only a couple inches shorter than Judy. Her shoulders were rigid with tension again. Either Judy's attempt at humour fell flat (at which point, she wasn't going to push her luck), or V was just that lost in her thoughts. With a small sigh, she joined her.

"Panam would argue with the weather if she could." Judy mumbled, setting the bottle of water at their feet. Finally, V snapped out of her reverie, gray eyes focusing on Judy’s. Guilt, or something like it, flickered across her features. 

Gingerly, Judy tilted V’s head and began to wipe away the grime. There was nothing to be done about the tank top.

"No, I--this time felt different. Final." V protested, keeping still for Judy. She closed her eyes. "I didn't--she's running herself into the ground trying to help me. I never wanted her to do that. I didn't ask her to do that." The rag joined the bottle at their feet unceremoniously. Judy opted to let V talk it out. She wasn’t sure what she could say to make it better, if anything at all.

“The past two months have been nothing but non-stop running after rumours. I’m starting to feel more like a puzzle she can’t solve and less like her friend, and it’s killing me more than Johnny has.” V added, the words tumbling one after the other in a rush. 

“Did you tell her this?” She asked.

“I tried to, but she just spoke over me. Wouldn’t let me.” V murmured. Disappointment wore her down, carved her into a study of bitter regret. It didn’t help Panam had been in a dark mood ever since they drew close to New Mexico, and no one knew why. Before, they were inseparable and never far from the other.

Hard to describe their bond when "close" barely scratched the surface. Nomads don't skimp on loyalty, but the depth of what Panam was willing to do--and has done--for V went beyond "for the family", edged a bit more on desperation bred of feelings she didn’t want to acknowledge. 

"Think I get it now." Judy said. "See, your first problem was telling her no." At that, a weak laugh bubbled out of V, encouraging her.

"And the second?" 

Judy studied V for a second. Her red hair dye was starting to give way to the natural dark brown of her hair. The neat haircut she once had was now shaggy, even began to fall into her eyes. It was adorably disheveled in Judy's modest opinion, particularly in the mornings. Brushing it out of V's eyes, she said, "Having a different opinion."

"That's a little unfair." A lop-sided grin quirked the corner of V’s mouth up. She caught Judy’s hand in her own, pressed a kiss to the hollow of her palm. A silent thank you.

"Am I wrong?" Judy continued to hold onto her hand, brushing a thumb over the valley of her knuckles. 

"Not really." V admitted, a wry look replacing the disappointment from earlier. There was an edge to her now, though. 

"Look, I get where Panam is coming from. I'm not exactly thrilled about your situation, either." Judy said softly, carefully. Her attention dropped to the torn knees of V’s jeans, the way their hands twined together.

Needing to bury someone else so close after losing Evelyn wasn't exactly on Judy's to-do list, but everyday she found herself creeping closer to acceptance. It helped she and V could make lasting memories while they could. There was a stark difference between losing a bit of someone every day opposed to having them violently ripped out of your life. And truthfully, the last couple of months had been some of the best she’s ever had.

"So, what? She's just scared?" V took back her hand, ran it through her hair again as if for want of something to do. Sitting still was never something she was good at.

"Aren't you?"

"Fuckin' terrified.” V admitted. “But I'm also so goddamn tired. I just want to be happy while I can. I don't want to waste my time looking for something that's not there."

"Just give her time, Valerie." Judy urged her.

"Yeah, maybe you're right." 

“Come here,” She cupped the back of V’s neck and brought her in for an embrace. 

No one knew how much time V had left. Generous estimates gave her half a year, and they were banking on that. Praying for it. The episodes were growing stronger, longer. Many of them now stole fragments of her short term memory, another example of her mental degradation. Yet with every attack, another wedge drove itself between Panam and V. 

For V's sake, she hoped she could patch things up with Panam.


End file.
